‘Weird and Daunting’: 7,000 Readers Told Us How It Felt to Focus

“Interesting, then boring, then interesting again.”

— Stacey Morris

“At first I didn’t think I could do it. Around the three-minute mark I began to lose interest and my mind wanted to wander. I had to intentionally think of questions relating to the painting to keep my interest.”

— Christina Chaperon

“Magical. My absorption with the painting would have gone on longer but was interrupted by the Times alert that Biden has dropped out.”

— Dan Beucke

“I began to imagine the people who lived within the scene, or around the waterway. What they were doing during this evening: Preparing for sleep? Venturing out? Tending to ill children? Making love? Preparing supper?”

— Shauna Cardenas

“Like being in the woods, hunting. Details come into focus as you scan.”

— Steve Reich

“It felt a little like practicing walking meditation. I spent most of the time I devoted to this exercise imagining myself on the banks of the river in the painting.”

— Amy Buzby

“I am Head of Education at the Yale Center for British Art and well aware of the difficulty some visitors may have spending time on one object. It is an exercise I have been using with medical students since 2002 to enhance their looking skills generally but specifically when working with patients.”

— Linda Friedlaender

“Seeing myself really seeing the piece, I was reminded of Cameron staring at the Seurat in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” … the emotion this exercise has the potential to untap.”

— Adrienne Reid

“When the timer flashed up and said it had been three minutes, I couldn’t believe it. I felt a bit panicky. ‘What am I going to do for seven more minutes?!’ I started to ask myself how the painting made me feel, then I started to look for things I hadn’t noticed – changes in color, buildings. That’s when I noticed the ghostly shapes reversed at the bottom of the painting. I spent a long time trying to figure them out and just like that, 10 minutes had passed.”

— Diana Valk

“Might start every day this way”

— Diana Toole

“Near the end, I entered a delicious state of revelation of the landscape, where the background became suddenly detailed, alive, three-dimensional, shifting from a Venice-like city to a seaside colliery.”

— Claude Baissac

“I had the sense the light was changing, getting a touch lighter like a sunrise. I’m 65, and my vision isn’t great. Eye strain was about to kick in. Funny that while I did this exercise news alerts started to come in about President Biden exiting the race. Luckily I saw the first one before we started or I would have been distracted.”

— Margaret Douglas

“I was intrigued by the painting and acutely aware of my desire to have an answer as to what it was depicting.”

— Hedwig O’Hara

“One way of ‘passing the time’ looking at it is to consciously reflect on how your reaction to it changes over time, from ‘horror’ to curiosity to analytical decomposition (pondering a detail), speculation to association; how it triggers memories of things seen and experienced, places been and the moods with it.”

— Frank Schwager

“I’m a 71-year-old white man living on our farm in Alabama. I found this simple and delightful. Now I am resolved to repeat this exercise outside. (But in the morning, when it’s not dreadfully hot!)”

— Lee Borden

“I was mesmerized by the use of whitish blue over red in both the sky and water. It reminded me of majolica pottery, tinted whitish colors over terra cotta clay. I also enjoyed looking at his brushstrokes going horizontally in the sky and water and vertically in the buildings.”

— Shari Apol

“I did once when at university (in 1968) spend a full three hours with “Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” at the request of my professor, Alan Kaprow, for a paper I was writing. That time to focus and deeply observe every detail of the painting) earned a reading aloud of my paper by Professor Kaprow to the entire lecture class.”

— Mary Lou Allen

“I did it late at night; it was quiet, and I darkened the room. I went from top to bottom, as I’m sure others did, but when I came to the bottom third of the painting, I stayed with that, trying to figure out if I saw water plants or fishes swimming.”

— Denise Kozminsky

“This is a skill I knew I once possessed in my 20s but have long since lost. I am now in my late 50s, and have recently moved to Paris for my partner’s work. Overwhelmed with the experience of packing up one’s life to live in a foreign country, I found this exercise incredibly useful and oddly nostalgic. With this meditative exercise, you have helped me unlock the secret to slowing down, living in the moment and truly noticing the world around you.”

— Michael Bennett

“The first minute was the longest one. Then I started to take in the details and figuring out, correctly, that there was an industrial plant by a river. The lights flickered and the water was moving slowly.”

— Markku Junkkari

“I felt almost sad to stop looking at it. Like we had a connection, of sorts.”

— Courtney Vaughn

“The whole painting brightened a little by the end of my short time looking. By taking time, it changed for me. Or, I changed for it?”

— John Barnes

“When I was about 5 or so — I’m in my late 60s now — we had one of those cast plaster plaques hung on my bedroom wall in Ireland. It had a mill, a stream, a horse-drawn cart, a winding road and a person leading the horse along. The plaster circle was about 20 centimeters in diameter, but to me it was a whole other world. … It’s long, long gone but in my mind’s eye I can still see that road that took me to wonderful places. Stop and wonder, I’d highly recommend it.”

— Susan Jordan

“When I go to a museum and spend 10 or 15 minutes looking at one painting, it tends to make the museum guards nervous; I’ve been chased away from works of art at more than one museum here in Connecticut.”

— Tom Pepper

“11 minutes and 33 seconds is nothing. I’ve stood in front of certain artworks in Florence for much longer — Masaccio’s frescoes in the Carmine, for example, or del Sarto’s paintings in the Pitti Palace. I’ve stood in front of certain poems by Rilke, Housman, and Frost et al. for years on end.”

— Jared Carter

“It felt good to stop and contemplate something, rather than the usual mindless scrolling.”

— Joey Albert

“I found it easier to spend time looking at the painting on my phone where I could zoom and scroll than if it were on a wall.”

— Eleanor Lustig

“Settling my own disorganized thoughts was a challenge.”

— Mike DiCristino

“At first there was some restlessness and thoughts of, ‘This will be boring.’ The longer I focused on this painting, the more I savored small details — even the edges of the canvas became interesting. Qualities of subtle color and shape emerged that were very satisfying.”

— Peter Lautz

“I focused my attention on the buildings, which appeared to me to be ancient, like a pyramid. But then the posts looked industrial, so I was trying to reconcile those differences.”

— Diana Johnson

“Had to push at the beginning. Be hardheaded. But the more I persisted the more I was to contemplate. And see the details. I’ve always liked the lights that reflect in the water at dusk. That helped. Also to fantasize that the buildings could be palaces or dismal abandoned industrial dwellings.”

— Juan Jaramillo

“I enjoyed trying to puzzle out the subject matter of Whistler’s painting. An industrial site in England, or temples and ziggurats on the Ganges, or in Egypt? By the time 10 minutes had passed, I was still not sure what I was seeing.”

— Ervin S. Duggan

“Perhaps this is almost contrary to the exercise, in a way: I was constantly intrigued by what I would find in the next zoomed-in frame that I was perhaps feeding my brain’s need for change and stimulation.”

— Abby Mrvos

“By the end of the 10 minutes, I was starting to see windows and doors in the original building. Was it my imagination or were they really there? So I was thrilled to see my imagination take off, and probably accomplish exactly what the artist wanted.”

—
Kathy Pollock

“This felt like an undoing as compared to doing.”

— Rebecca Klein

“I found the experiment a bit weird and daunting at first. But after a while, my breathing became calmer, and yes, my focus became everything, noticing little details in the painting and finding my mind quiet with questions.”

— Gerhard Ehlers

“Weird but then settling in felt very good … unfortunately, I just got notified President Biden just dropped out of the race which made me drop the painting for live news. Frenetically returning to our country’s fraught future. Don’t think quiet contemplation is my future for a while, if ever again.”

— Melissa Talle

“Long, then short, then long, then short. I was surprised that I began to FEEL the water moving, seeing the different shades of blue/gray.”

— Marsha Slater Rider

“I felt physically lightened — as if pressures inside my chest and brain were somehow equalized with the environment around me.”

— Steven Dahlke

“After the first three minutes, I thought I would not be able to continue. I gave myself permission to spend the time doing this. At first I felt challenged, then relaxed and focused.”

— Michelle Croft

“While I still wouldn’t say I especially enjoyed Whistler’s work, spending more time with it did elicit familiar feelings of anticipation and unease associated with twilight that I would not have found it I had interacted with it naturally in a gallery; I likely would have passed it by.”

— Matthew Eimer

“I am a high school art history teacher, and would be interested in trying a modified version of this assignment with my students. With their Tik-Tok level attention spans, I think the act of close looking (even for a short period of time, like three minutes!) would benefit their focus-building skills.”

— Leslie Kepner

“I awoke at 1:12 after a very long day of battling Covid, a fever, stifling congestion and a cutting sore throat … I felt the artist had invited me to join him in seeking the deep treasures of passing time quietly and peacefully after a fitful day of illness.”

— Crystal Barnes Maynard

“At first, ‘Oh, God.’ Then it became a kind of meditation, and I started settling into the details of painting to explore.”

— Masanari Kawahara

“As with meditation, I found my mind wandering. But was able to use the painting as an anchor to return my focus. Then I allowed my mind to actually wander for a bit and allowed myself to sit with emotions that came up. Would I like to go to this place and visit? Reminds me of West Virginia. Who would I go with? Do I want to share this painting with someone else?”

— Jessica Haines

“It may be a reproduction, but I still enjoyed reflecting on the ambience, the ‘story,’ and the enigmas in this reproduction of the painting.”

— Sonja Maund

“A few months ago in the Musée d’Orsay, I found myself mesmerized by Van Gogh’s “Starry Night Over the Rhône.” Delighted with little details, my attention was fully captured, and it wasn’t until my husband put his arm around me that I realized I was back in the middle of a crowded museum and not standing on the banks in the French countryside on a quiet evening.”

— Holly Williamson

“It seemed like it would be painful to my adult ADHD brain. Actually, the time ended before I wished it to end.”

— Tresa Cerne

“Frenetic doesn’t cut it — we need to think. I was a professor, and my students always responded to my query of “I wonder…” with “We can Google it.” One day, I heard them tell a new student: “Don’t say Google it… wonder to her does not mean you need an answer!””

— Linda Parkyn

“Relaxing, peaceful, also little bursts of joy when I discovered something I hadn’t noticed in the first few minutes.”

— Susan Fine

“Caught between the pages of a William Gass phantasmagoria.”

— Duke Stewart

“I am 73 and grappling with how I spend the diminishing remainder of my time in this life. For me, this exercise was a reminder — but not really an epiphany — of the preciousness of my time. I take the stoic’s approach to seeking out and enjoying life. Certainly, slowing down, paying attention, and thinking about how I feel about Whistler’s painting was a familiar ‘habit’ I fall into whenever I’m hiking, or watching my grandkids play, or watering the rhododendrons.”

— Alan Guggenheim

“I was surprised that the time went quickly. Spending 10 minutes, I saw things that I never would have noticed. I had to put my cat down yesterday, and this exercise helped!”

— Debbi Luhr

“I lasted the 10 minutes and noticed that the picture became brighter as I watched, with more definition. It was as if the sun was slowly rising and illuminating the landscape.”

— Cyrus Yocum

“I use this technique with my medical students to learn to pay attention to what they see and to actually see rather than just look at lab values and radiographs.”

— Brian Childs

“I knew an excellent instructor, Joanna Ziegler at the College of the Holy Cross, who had her students do a semester-long version of this exercise back in the early 2000s. The results were astounding! Students built a thoughtful real relationship to the painting based on their experiences.”

— Stephen Burt

“At first, irritation and anger at what was being asked. Then, identifying as a lover of art, determination to rise to the challenge. Finally, sheer delight upon noticing the second mirrored reflection.”

— Melissa Peterson

“I witnessed the speed with which my mind is operating these days.”

— Amber Bowler

“For some reason, it reminded me of my childhood and just whiling away a summer day examining a dandelion.”

— Candace Samay

“After finding all the things of note, I started to feel sleepy. But right before I almost dozed off, I suddenly noticed the second (reversed!) reflection and jolted awake.”

— Mariela Paz

“The painting, while beautiful and complex, afforded me a 10-minute reprieve from mourning. A beloved member of my family was killed this evening. The shock and horror has allowed no diversion, until I began looking at this painting, and took a breath and then another.”

— Jennifer Powers

“My mother went back to college in the early 70s as an Art History major at Vassar and would ‘drag’ my brothers and me to museums. To calm three unruly boys under the age of 12, she would have us look at a painting for a minute, turn our backs, and then try to describe the painting in as much detail as possible.”

— Winter Mead

“It reminded me of an exercise, which my daughter gave to me some weeks ago, when she said: ‘Go to this park at your neighborhood, sit down at the tree which is close to the little brook and watch. Just sit and watch.’ I did it, and it was wonderful.”

— Philip Leonhard

“I would always say, ‘I could never devote that much time staring at a painting.’ But after doing this exercise, I now have the confidence that I can. ”

— Sam Pendleton

“At first, I thought it might be a riverside scene in Thailand, though I had no evidence that Whistler had ever been there.”

— Michael MacLeod

“I did the exercise for 10 minutes and 7 seconds. Afterwards, I sat and sipped my coffee without turning to my phone, thinking about what the future will bring.”

— Julie Huff

“It was like getting into a too-hot tub. At first I resisted, but then I settled in and it felt nice.”

— Amy Dawn Curtis

“I felt this connection to the artist through his brushstrokes, a personal encounter made across centuries.”

— Dan Madison Savage

“The longer one looks at anything, the greater the possibility that the unexpected comes to you.”

— Milijan Krecu